Re: The Breaststroke Lane

It also looks like you are kicking down when you bring your feet back together, rather than back. The best judge of this would be King Frog or Jim Rude. Guys?

My two cents: that kick is very close to being illegal. Feet must turn outward at propulsive part of kick. I would DQ a kid with that kick, and call it a dolphin kick.

Try laying on a bed on your stomach, with legs over the edge from knees down, and focus on slowly bringing your heels up, then turning your feet out, and then finally kicking back, completing the kick with legs straight behind you.

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

Originally Posted by JimRude

My two cents: that kick is very close to being illegal. Feet must turn outward at propulsive part of kick. I would DQ a kid with that kick, and call it a dolphin kick.

Try laying on a bed on your stomach, with legs over the edge from knees down, and focus on slowly bringing your heels up, then turning your feet out, and then finally kicking back, completing the kick with legs straight behind you.

I looked at the video,composed my reply,scrolled through the remaining posts only to find Jim had written almost word for word my suggestion.

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

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Re: The Breaststroke Lane

I enjoyed Nagy's series very much. But it is VERY simplified, and there are many swimmers who use different techniques than what he shows in the simplified series.

Photo 2 in the base position isn't that bad if the swimmer does not stay there for more than 0.1 seconds. I actually prefer to see the swimmers butt raise up. Look at the trials, the old saying "as the hands go forword the butt comes up" many breastrokers have that portion happening. What Nagy did not emphasize enough is how long to stay in the base streamlined position.

I tell swimmers for every one tenth of a second additional you stay in the base position without loosing speed that will reduce your total time by an additional 0.1 seconds per stroke.

Look at Amanda Beard, she still comes out high, but really look at how long she stays underwater in the base position each stroke. She continues to swim less strokes per 200 meters than almost every other woman in breaststroke.

Exactly same with the men, and the best ever at the base position is Kitijima.
But when Rowdy Gaines talkes about how LONG the breaststrokers and IMers are, he really should be saying "Look How long they stay in the streamlines position". Michael and Ryan both have amazing breaststrokes, great streamlines during each stroke.

The two young guns in the mens 200 breast finals both had great base streamlines, better than the two who were favored. Technique is all important in breaststroker.

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

In Nagy's Part 2 the Kick, again there are more than one way to skin a breastroker (we love our cats).

Photo 8 shows a very popular techniques for elite breaststrokers, mostly Stanford swimmers. We call it the W kick and is much less stress on the knee joints.

I always tell people to EXPLODE the heels back to the butt, then anchor and start the propulsive portion of the kick almost gently, gaining speed at the feet as the kick goes back.

Remember the only time breaststrokers almost stop forwards movement is during the recover of the heels to the butt. So the quicker this happens the less there is of that loss of forwards motion. Multiple that by every stroke in a 200 meters, say 16 strokes per 50 meters, thats 64 chances to reduce the dead spots. So say you cut your kick recovery time from 0.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds, thats 6.4 HUGE SECONDS.

That is why I hate the egg beaters with the poor swimmer holding a weight up. STUPID STUPID drill. Much better is my all out forwards knee pumping egg beater. Basically teaching the legs and heels to explode as fast as possible. I have had swimmers cut their 50 time by one second per 50 doing this drill.

Photo 11 is way too much down kick, but again I like for some (not all) breaststrokers to have a slight downkick. The vector forces are still great horizontall but there is a nice elevation causing the butt to go up higher, and you will feel like you are swimming DOWNHILL rather than pushing water.

The most important photo is missing. That would be the soles of the feet and heels SLAMMING together at the end of every kick. Not coming together - slamming together. Again doing this (Kitijamas coach calls it the ankle snap) can cut your time by 0.1 seconds per stroke. The great John Moffet used to tell me he could bruise his heels by slamming them together so hard in the water. That studd had the largest thighs and calves I ever saw. especially after he did some pro bikiing.

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

Part 3 The pull also has soem photos of excellent technique, just different from what Nagy coached. In the 1990s both breaststrokers and butterfliers have the same pull, a huge outwards scull just under the waters surface.

But like photo 18 and 23, in the late 1990s breaststrokers started using a pull backwards instead of a huge outwards scull.

None of the men and women are using that type of scull anymore. They are using a pull back freestyle (front catch and pull portion) or a hybrid of the scull and pull back.

The reason becomes obvious when you look at the breaststrokers in the trials.

Look at the lane lines, see what portion of the stroke gains the most distance?

The pull is barely one foot to 18 inches, while the kick and glide in base position is three times further.

So coaches (mostly european at the time) went into their deep breaststroke thoughts and came up with the following results:

You can actually gain a couple of inches more on a pull or hybrid scull and pull over the huge scull.

And better yet the pull takes MUCH less time to cover the same distance. So with less time spent in the pull, there was more time available to get into a better streamlined base position and hold it there longer.

I have coached younger breaststrokers to have almost no scull and pull, just a VERY QUICK pull WAY out front. Look at Soni, look how much distance she gets on her 'pull". ( NOT VERY MUCH) She skeeter bugs over that portion of her stroke so fast.

Even the breaststrokers who are great arm scullers/ pullers and say they are not great kickers, they really are very good kickers and can out kick 99% of all swimmers in a kick session. They might say they can only kick a 32 second 50 meters and the great ones can kick a couple of seconds faster. How many out there can kick a 32?

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

Part 4 Underwater stroke mistakes: this is all good nut I wish there were more photos of it being done correctly.

Again one important photo is missing of mistakes. Worst I ever saw was Brendan Hansen in the 200 trials. Every portion of his position was perfect, EXCEPT the wrists were bent down at over a 60 degree down angle.

The wrists should NEVER be used for depth control, as they are out in fresh water and this can cause the most resistance. Depth control is controlled by very fine movements of the entire arms and hands. A 1/4 inch change can be 3 inches change in depth, but because the wrists are not bent in a drag position there is no loss of speed. I estimate Brendan Hansen lost one foot of distance, fortunately he did not do that at every wall.

But if a swimmer did break streamline by bending their wrists in a 200 meters, that would be four times one foot. That could easily be the difference between first and eighth place.

Re: The Breaststroke Lane

Part 4 Head position mistakes is well done.

I wrote a article about the head position during the 2004 trials "What went wrong with the wave style breaststroke?" Published in The American Swimming Magazine which is the magazine for ASCA - American Swim Coaches Association, I ranted how US coaches were copying the losing swimmers from the 1992 Olympics and people like Amanda Beard (different stoke then, as much as 46 strokes per 50 meters).

I go into the timing one tenth of a second at a time, you can read it on my web site. Everything is still valid. In fact coaches and swimmers on ever level after that validated my ideas.

I think it is important for swimmers to actually know why their coaches are trying them to control head position. Even 8 year old girls (not the boys) like it explained to them.

When my swimmers were not doing it correctly, one simple drill corrects them within 60 seconds. I have them swim 50 yards like I learned in the 1960's, with the head held up completely out of the water. The swimmers call this drill "Cruel and unusual punishment".